Ghosts Of The Lower Ninth Ward

Kenny Klein

When I was young I never dreamed

Of the sorrow that haunted the places I've seen

Ghosts of old women crying out in fright

You can hear them haunting the bayou night

Bones that lie in the sandy soil

Never really buried at all

Around the levee you can hear the hoard

Unquiet spirits of the lower ninth ward

I know the song the spirits sing each

Since the waters rose in the hurricane

Some died in the attic some died in the rain

The the bones in the mud well it's all the same

There was no one to help them there was no one to cry

When water filled the earth and the sky

Parents and children lost in the flood

Voices and bones in the bayou mud

CH: Oh Allegba take me up in the air

Chango come kill me I just don't care

Oshun convey me to some lovely place

Where I can wear a different face

But all I hear is the wind in the night

The sorrowful cuckoo in her flight

The frightful cries of the ghostly hoard

Who haunt the soil of the lower ninth ward

O fight with the wind or fight with the rain

In the end it's all the same

death in the flood or death in the fire

The ghostly voices never tire

Curse the Orishas and you can't take it back

Curse your God for the want or the lack

You can cry against the howling storm

But in the end your children are gone

CH

When I was young I never joined

I was a loner, abandoned and scorned

Now I stand in the rain and the mud

And sing with the ghosts of the lower ninth ward

From the CD